EU-hosted, non-EU parentStorage & BackupHeadquarters: CH

Exoscale: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Exoscale is a European cloud provider offering compute, managed Kubernetes, managed databases, networking and security services. Its storage portfolio covers object, archive and block storage. Object storage is S3-compatible and available across several European zones located in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Bulgaria and Croatia, with a further zone in Spain listed as upcoming. It is a public cloud service consumed through a console and API, aimed at organisations that want to run infrastructure in Europe.

Exoscale is headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland; Exoscale is a registered trademark of Akenes SA. Since 2017 the company has been part of A1 Digital and thus of the A1 Telekom Austria Group, which is listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange. The majority stake was acquired by A1 digital international GmbH, a subsidiary of Telekom Austria Group, so the ultimate parent sits in Austria. The product is not open source. For organisations that want to keep data within European jurisdictions, the zones in EU member states and Switzerland are the relevant options.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Exoscale pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

69 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-2100
Headquartered in Switzerland: Swiss law, recognised by the EU as adequate
Data residency SOV-390
Hosting in the EU and Switzerland
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-360
Key management with a European vendor
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-655
Closed source, runtime with the vendor

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 9, 2026

Headquarters	CH (EU)Verified by hand
Ultimate parent company	MXVerified by hand
Sovereignty model	Vendor-hosted (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	EU, CHVerified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	exoscale - Akenes SA, CH (CH)Technically measured
Category	Storage & Backup
Type	Product
Website	exoscale.com ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Exoscale

The European alternatives to Exoscale come from our knowledge base of over 6,800 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

32 European Storage & Backup vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with Exoscale

Exoscale is headquartered in Switzerland and falls under Swiss law, including the revised Swiss data protection act. Switzerland is not an EU member, but the European Commission recognises its level of data protection as adequate. Its Swiss headquarters does not by itself bring it under US legislation such as the CLOUD Act. The ultimate owner is based in MX. Foreign control undermines part of the certainty a European headquarters offers.

Exoscale hosts data in the EU and in Switzerland. Switzerland is covered by a European Commission adequacy decision, so personal data can go there without extra safeguards. If you require strictly EU hosting, check the data processing agreement for which data is stored in Switzerland.

Exoscale is closed source and hosted by the vendor. The encryption keys and the runtime sit with the vendor and switching requires data migration. Ask about bring-your-own-key, export options and open standards.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Exoscale together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Exoscale?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Exoscale include Acronis, Atempo and Bacula Systems. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Exoscale?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Exoscale include Bacula Systems, Bareos and BorgBackup. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Exoscale GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Exoscale is headquartered in CH (EFTA) and hosts data in EU, CH. That makes Exoscale an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 9, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in Storage & Backup

Storage & Backup: Business storage, backup solutions, object storage and data recovery. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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